A Chance Encounter
by Tes-thesula
Summary: Iyokus meets one of the objects of his interest while on a mission to save the daughter of an old friend.


Medyna sipped the wine, and then pulled a face. Moonberry wine was the only drink on the menu that she could stomach, but rather than importing from Darnassus, the owner of the inn she was staying at had decided to order from the new human interests that had sprung up in the wake of the Kaldorei joining the Alliance.

It was typical of humans that they would rush something as delicate as winemaking. Where the drink should have been smooth and bursting with the fragrant flavours of the berries, it was bitter and sluggish, cloying on her tongue rather than gliding across it. Not for the first time, Medyna found herself wondering why she was spending so much time in Stormwind, so far from all the things she had grown up with. She sighed, picking up her pen again and returning her attention back to the report she was writing. The curls and swoops of the Darnassian lettering swam and danced in her vision and she had to blink away the fuzz that crept up on the edges of her sight. Shaking her head firmly , the sometimes-priestess leaned over her desk until the writing made sense again.

Just as she was about to put pen to paper there came a loud banging on her door. She was so startled that she dragged the tip of her pen over the paper, drawing a line of ink through her previous work. She muttered a very unpriestly curse and marched over to her door, readying a few choice words as the banging continued.

She swung the door open, a glare fixed on her marred face, only to come face to face with a grinning Iyokus.

His hair was limp and his normally bright eyes dim. His armour, such as it was, was in tatters and he was clutching one hand to his stomach tightly, but he was still grinning, wolfish in the flickering light.

'What-' Medyna started, her irritation quickly disappearing to be replaced by consternation.

Iyokus, leaning heavily on the door frame, waggled a finger at her, 'You know Green, you can be very difficult to find at short notice.'

And then he passed out on her floor.

* * *

It was night dark.

Clouds had pulled low over the earth, masking the light of the stars and moon, and the house was far from any settlements, its own little plot of farmland. The fields were laboriously ploughed and furrowed and neatly ordered, the marks of a determined hand.

Sitting within the small house, his gnarled hands gripped tight on the arms of the chair he sat in. No lights were lit in the walls and he brooded in darkness, his chin bent close to his chest, his thick beard bristling. He couldn't see anything and he did not want to, everything he had would remind him of what had been taken, and the wound already felt like a hole in his heart, pumping sorrow in a river that felt like it would never cease.

He gripped tighter, the old scars on his knuckles turning white and the wood creaked beneath his strong hands. All his years, all his experience. The men he had killed, the skills he had earned. It had availed him nothing when they had come, as quiet as the breaths of the dead. They had plucked up his love while he slept and he had been useless, dreaming about the work of the next day. He had not thought them so capable. He turned his unseeing gaze to the short sword that hung above his hearth. Had he really believed that would be enough to protect his family?

Idiot.

He stirred as he felt the movement in the air. There was something in the shadows, he could feel its heat and he quelled the primordial fear of the dark that all humans suffered from with barely a thought.

'They have taken her,' he said, his voice hoarse and hollow and dead, 'They have taken my daughter.'

There was no reply, but he knew that the presence was listening.

'They wanted me to leave. To sell up and go. And now they have taken her to use against me.' He swallowed, forcing down the sob.

'I would have gone, but I'm not enough anymore. Only you Quill, only you never changed,' his voice hardened into the tones of a man who had slain without remorse. He thought of the small room next to his own, the pillow stained red with its horrific gift placed carefully on top, the delicately pink finger alone. He had travelled with his once-companion for so many years that he fancied that he could feel the boiling anger that rose and grew in the shadows, the chains that strapped it down and directed it drawing tight.

'Get her back.'

Silence still, and then Wren, the once-soldier, once-mercenary, now farmer felt movement pass by his chair, deeper into the house and he let out his breath. It felt like a burden had been lifted from his shoulders, passed across to the darkness. The worry still clenched tight around his chest, choking every breath, but something else welled inside him.

Righteous vengeance.

Let them reap what they had sown. And Wren well knew the nature of the whirlwind he had unleashed upon those Defias animals – there was no prayer desperate enough to save them now.

* * *

Iyokus stalked through the house, the darkness no obstacle at all to his elven eyes. He mounted the stairs quickly and carefully placed himself behind the shaking back of Wren's wife. She was grey-haired and small, but strongly boned. It stung him to see her so crushed.

'Ahna,' he started, 'I know you have never liked me. You have always thought you have known what I am.'

He paused, searching for the words that would offer some kind of strength.

'Wren has let go of his past, and I am part of that past – a history you did not want around your girl. Out of respect for you and Wren, I have stayed away.' He leaned closer, voice lowering.

'I am exactly what you have always feared me to be.'

He stood there a moment longer and then nodded, turning on his heel and leaving. He did not stay to see the relieved smile that broke Ahna's wracking sobs.

* * *

'You never met Wren, did you?'

Medyna shook her head quickly, her lips pursed in concentration as she dragged her thumb down Iyokus's side. She had managed to drag him over to her cot after he had collapsed and had quickly stripped him of the ruins of his armour. She had been shocked to discover he was drenched in his own blood and covered in slash wounds. Some had been minor, mere tears of his hide and she had promptly ignored them, swiftly mopping the blood from his torso to find the deeper cuts that threatened his life.

She was surprised he had even managed to stand given the severity of the wounds that he had. It was like he had walked into a storm of blades. But she was a veteran of every kind of war that had raged across Azeroth and marshalled herself, battening down her worry - it would do nothing to heal Iyokus.

'He was one of the first humans I got along with when I crossed the ocean. We were mercenaries together for a while, in Alterac, fighting for the dwarves.' Iyokus seemed unconcerned as Darnassian calligraphy, bound in interlocking glowing circles floated over his torso, gentle entreaties to Elune to bind the broken flesh. Already, Medyna could feel the start of the headache that would cripple her for the next few days.

She reached over to her side, where she had prepared some bandages and poultices while Iyokus had slept after the major healing she had done. A thick white welt crossed from just under his left nipple, sweeping down across his stomach and ending at the tip of his jutting hip bone. His pelvis had been cracked and would remain chipped; a slight gouge that she could feel as she delicately ran her fingers over it. She flicked her eyes to his face, which was reclining against the pillow, his expression settled as he did his second favourite activity, espousing at great length about his adventures. She allowed herself a tight little smile – there was nothing smooth about Iyokus, he would only cherish the tiny dip in his bone, another story to tell, another trophy earned.

'When our contracts ran out, we decided to travel together. He was very much a perfect complement to me, his own stout style fitting well with my, ah, more aggressive tendencies. Eventually we parted ways,' Iyokus cocked his head, a fleeting dark look crossing his face. 'I suppose in each of us there is a hoary dank well in which we throw the horrors we have seen, and when that gets too full we have to make a change...' He made to move his arm to his chin, but Medyna slapped him still, raising a warning finger as she wound bandages around him.

'Anyway, it was not difficult to find the den of those Defias bandits. They wanted him to capitulate after all, come on his knees and beg for their mercy. He may have been old, but they clearly did not know the man they threatened.' He smiled to himself, and Medyna wondered what memory he was caught in. 'It was one of the old mines, you know the sort – someone finds a shallow seam and suddenly half the mountain is burrowed into before any one has the nous to ask whether it's worth all the effort. Well, the Defias had moved in when the miners moved out, turned it into somewhere liveable, better than a lot of what people have in Westfall. Full of the usual sort.' He shook his head dismissively, 'They think if they give a thug a long knife they've made a warrior.'

He lifted his arms as Medyna silently tugged him forwards, allowing her to wind the magic-soaked bandages around his torso, her long graceful fingers patting down any bumps.

She coughed, giving him a sceptical look, 'And it was these thugs that did this to you? You _are_ getting slow.'

Her reply was a withering expression so overdone that it made her laugh.

'I went at night, to put the fear of the gods in them...'

* * *

'Open the door! For Light's sake open the fucking door!' There was a hammering on the door, frantic and desperate, and as the seconds ticked by the voice became shrill, a shriek, 'He's right there! Open the DO-!'

The voice was cut off, reduced to a wet gurgling when the blood-stained blade of a sword appeared, thrust straight through the wood of the door. It was still a moment, a solitary drop of blood tumbling to the rough, barely worked stone of the mine, then it was pulled back, withdrawing as suddenly as it had appeared. There was the noise of a full sack slumping to the floor.

A bang against the door, hard enough to shake it on its hinges, splinters flying free. Another and another, like the footsteps of a relentless titan and then the door exploded open. Iyokus stepped through, his narrow sword carried loosely in one hand. His armour was strapped tightly to his muscular, lean body – a collection of leather, studded and dripping chain sections. There were the marks of ineffectual cuts and thrusts upon him, as well as splashes of other people's blood. Scorch marks blasted up his chest, the minor sorceries of desperate hedge wizards. Behind him was a wake of destruction, as if a demon had been let loose, not a man.

There was only one guard left in the room, and he stood slowly when Iyokus entered, carefully lowering his hands to his side, but the sight of him was enough to draw the warrior up short.

Iyokus was stunned, caught between snapping his sword into position and dropping it from twitching fingers.

'You?' was about all he managed.

The other man, also a night elf, naked from the waist up, merely curled his lips into the approximation of a smirk. Unlike the others of his kind, he did not wear a cloth across his eyes, and the mangled flesh and pits bunched grotesquely where the knife had plucked out the offending orbs. His powerful chest, a study of perfect musculature, was carved with tattoos, almost invisible against the deep purple of his skin. Like Iyokus, he was also banded in scars, a sure measure of age on any Kaldorei that took up arms.

Iyokus felt his mouth go dry and his lips pulling into a rictus grin.

* * *

'The first demon hunter I ever saw was very many centuries ago... millennia,' _Iyokus told to Medyna while she spooned him the broth she had the innkeeper cook up_, 'I was a small boy, so young I had very little idea of even who I was, and no notion of what I was to become. It might surprise you, though I imagine it will amuse you more, but I was also quite the pudgy little boy back then. Both my mother and my sister were quite happy to indulge my habit for sweet buns. Anyway, I had just been to see the baker and was happily waddling home, munching on my buns when I spotted a stranger. He was sitting on a log, a little ways out from the centre of the village, hunched over with a blanket across his shoulders, which were as broad as any orcs. I suppose what really peaked my curiosity was the colour of his hair. Yes, I know it's silly, but it was black, not sleek like a raven's but deep, matt. You well know how rare black hair is, and it was enough to draw my attention.

'Children... they are innocent by nature, and though I had heard talk of demon hunters, that they consorted with abominations and betrayed our people, I didn't really _understand_ what that meant in terms of my behaviour towards them. So when he turned his head at my approach and I spotted the cloth over his eyes, I was even more interested, rather than afraid. He was friendly enough, answering my inane questions – I can't really remember what they were. I suppose I asked him if he had ever seen a demon, killed one, whatever. Eventually, I sat next to him on the log, and let him talk, even gave him one of my buns. It was what he wanted I think – I could see he was unused to it, the way he stretched out his jaw before speaking, and enunciated everything absurdly clearly. Who did a pariah have to speak to after all?

'I let him do most of the talking really, once he warmed to it. He asked me a few questions, if I knew so-and-so family name. I wasn't much good I don't think, shrugging like only a chubby child can and telling him about another boy with the same name who pushed me over or something. That made him chuckle. I remember that laugh quite clearly, it was surprisingly musical, and I wonder what he might of made his life had he not taken up the mantle. I wonder if he ever sung to himself when he was alone, hunting monsters. I doubt it, but still, it's is a nice thought.

'I stayed with him for a long time I think, but someone else must have seen him – he was not trying very hard to hide himself after all, and before the sun could rise, we were approached by others. He seemed to stiffen and I whipped around. Behind us were four sentinels. They were not in uniform, but I could tell that they were by their bearing. They were like four rumbling stormheads, bristling with thunder. One of them cuffed the back of my head and told me to run on. I've told you of my childhood fear of the sentinels and even though I wanted to stay with my new friend, I was too frightened and scurried away.

'I didn't go so far though, just enough for them to see me running. I was just a boy after all, nothing to be interested in, not with a fully fledged demon hunter in their village. I watched as they berated him, and him get to his feet and raise his hands to placate them. I didn't really understand what was going on, as far as I was concerned, the man just wanted to see some elves again. Then they started to beat him. I must have hid my face them, because when I looked up once more, he was on the ground and they were kicking him with a vengeance. Why didn't he defend himself? Of course now it is obvious to me, to anyone with half a brain, but back then I could feel this fist tightening around my heart, making it hard to breathe. I can remember willing him to stand up, to _fight. _

'Somehow, even from behind his blindfold, from my hiding place, his gaze found mine. And I saw something appear on his face. It was... like he lit a fire in me, in his blind eyes I could _feel _it. Pride. He had given away everything, sacrificed his culture, his history – he had almost forgotten how to _speak!_ Can you imagine the loneliness? He may have even have burned away his soul to protect a people which reviled him. But he had his pride left, what else does such a man cling on to? It was awe-inspiring, I can barely articulate how it made me feel then.

'And then he moved. It happened so fast, how to describe such movements? I ignored the rain that began to fall, caught up in the unfolding events. He surprised the sentinels, and it was like they had been beating a rock, such was his poise. I have been a warrior all my life, and I know form when I see it and his was flawless. Every motion was precise, thrumming with power. The rain seemed to be curved by his attacks, whipped around by the force he could command. He was silent, no angry barks of retribution, just the quiet power of a proud man.

'Within moments, he had laid them all down, had them crawling away from his legs. He did not follow, and let them get to their feet. I was cheering in my mind – let them come at him a hundred times, he would break them again and again! Their faces, to my surprise did not show fear, but dark hatred. They were splattered with mud, long hair slapped down with the rain, and blood staining their faces, but no fear. Sentinels I suppose. Looking back now, it was murder in their eyes that I saw, and they were just waiting for one of their number to make the first move. One of them did, the scrap of metal as she pulled free her sword making me tremble.

'He faced them down, though I could see his blind gaze shifting to glance at the long oilskin wrapped package that leaned against the log. What was in it? I had no doubt they were the weapons of a true demon hunter, just out of reach. For a moment, something changed in him and the sentinels flinched back as the rain that fell on him steamed, hissing, instantly vaporised. Then it seemed like he...shrunk in on himself, and he shifted from stance to standing. He raised his hands in defeat, slowly picked up his few belongings and walked away from the village – on a path that would lead deeper into the forest.

'I always thought that I would see him again. We were both long-lived creatures and the world is only so big. But it was not to be so. The man that indelibly inscribed on me my image of martial perfection, the form I tried so hard to emulate as a younger man... gone forever, probably dead at the hands of some evil that threatened innocents.

'A life-long fascination with them, I have a very healthy respect for their abilities. So you can imagine my shock to be faced with one deep within the bowels of some Defias fortress...'

* * *

The demon hunter took some slow steps backwards, retrieving his war glaives from the table as he moved. The blades were in incredibly good condition for all their age, the metal shining with an almost liquid shimmer, the cutting edges catching what little light filled the chamber. Everything else about the elf spoke of apathetic decay and ruin. His inky purple hair was unbound and unkempt, hanging in limp tangles, and his darkly coloured kilt was ragged and frayed, tears showing the muscle-cabled thighs underneath.

Iyokus stepped forward lightly, raising the point of his sword defensively, and the two elves began to circle each other, measuring out the space in the chamber.

'What are you doing here, working for these ... humans?' he asked, in Darnassian.

The demon hunter rolled his shoulders, arms hanging loosely, the heavy blades swinging casually, the dark pits of what remained of his eyes inscrutable. He worked his jaw before speaking, his voice gravelly and cracked, as if he had swallowed a lit coal.

'I could ask the same of you.'

Iyokus frowned, the warrior part of his mind searching for openings even as he spoke, 'The girl is precious to a friend of mine, and thus dear to me.'

The hunter stopped, becoming absolutely motionless, his head cocked to one side as if confused, 'Then why are you still talking?'

Iyokus swore in frustration quietly, 'It doesn't have be like this. What is your name brother?'

The demon hunter bared his teeth in a simulacrum of a grin, and Iyokus narrowed his eyes when he noticed the pointed teeth. So long had the hunter lived with the fel that it had mutated his body. He stretched out his arms, his shadow growing behind him, flickering demonically and the hunter seemed to fill the space – his presence palpable, oppressive and if Iyokus were a lesser man, he would have shrank back from the terror.

'My name is Ash.'

Iyokus shook his head sadly, 'That isn't your name.'

'She waits just through the door you know. Alone, in the damp, unlit depths. I hear her crying. I haven't bothered to feed her.' Ash's voice was monotonous, probing Iyokus's equanimity, heedless of the crimes he was reciting.

He held his hand up, interrupting the hunter's cruelties.

'So be it.'

Iyokus tugged his dagger free from its sheath at his waist, the blade clean and shiny. He had no need for it so far this night, the Defias falling easily before his sword. He knew it would be no match for the heavy, wide blades of the war glaives, but it would at least allow him to parry and slash.

The last of the lamps flickered out, leaving only the burning points that were Iyokus's eyes, hanging in the darkness.

And then...

Sparks.

* * *

'As you know Green, it is one thing to see by the light of the moon, and quite another to see with the fire of our own eyes. It turns our vision into a tunnel, with a centre of illumination surrounded by impenetrable shadows. What we behold glows with an aura, makes them look... holy.'

Iyokus squirmed in the bed, and Medyna grimaced, shuffling to the side to make room for his bulk.

'Even in that half kind of vision, even with the obvious decline, he was... perfect. It is hard to convey the thrill that set inside me. I know my obsessions are my own, but I was ready then to supplicate before him, get on my knees and beg him to teach me something of his ways. Only the knowledge that Wren was depending on me kept me from doing just that. What did I care that the man had sided with the Defias? He was a warrior.

'And Medyna,' he rolled onto his side, looking at her eyes, trying to _push_ the feeling into her mind, 'He was... awesome. I had to stretch myself further than ever, use every trick and technique I have ever learned. And you know what? Even now I do not know whether he was trying as hard as he could have. I am convinced that there were moments, mere fractions of a breath, the times that masters fight in, where he could have cut me.'

The priestess perked one delicate white eyebrow, the scars on her face pulling tight as she prodded a finger against the weave of bandages that encased Iyokus's torso and arms. He chuckled, and spread his hands apologetically.

'Exactly Green... he did this to me. To _me! _Iyokus Shatterstar and he might not have even been trying his hardest. You should have been there, just to watch. It was not poetry, it was not dancing or a song. There was no music in the clash of our steel. But it was, it was...' Iyokus squinted, looking back at the moment, wetting his lips as he searched for the words, 'Purity, in form and motion. We might have been fighting for anything, or for nothing. Some might call that a waste, but to me it was sacred.'

Medyna crossed her arms over her stomach, frowning and thinking of the rich red stains that blotched the floorboards.

'How are you here Iyo? If it was as you tell it to be?'

The big elf sighed, his broad shoulders shrugging, making his cheek twitch as he tugged on his new wounds.

'I cared more. That's all it was I think. Something inside him had cracked or broken, made him brittle. I wasn't prepared to die there and he just didn't care either way. He never told me though, even as he choked his last, he wouldn't tell me why.'

'Why?'

'What he was doing there. Why someone with the strength of purpose that a demon hunter must have would work for humans as unprincipled and degenerate as the Defias. What could have happened to him? And if he could fall so far, what hope do the rest of us have?'

It was Medyna's turn to shrug this time, which she did with great aplomb, 'Don't worry too much Iyokus, if you start looking that a way, I'll make sure I put you right. Now, you need to rest, and more importantly, _I _need to rest. You've given me the worst headache I've had since you fell off that roof.'

Iyokus chuckled and grinned at her as she blew out the candle and snuggled down into the bed.

'You know Green, I think you might have grasped it... clearly not just a pretty face.' He sat there for a moment longer, staring into the darkness, thinking of that solitary soul, slipping further and further away from his path, with no one there to catch him. Finally, he closed his eyes, worming his way down into the covers.

'You know... I've heard that the best way to deal with a headache is to-'

'Shut up Iyokus, _that_ doesn't count as resting.'

He giggled.


End file.
